Apocalypse: A New World

Chapter XXII: Death Wins

Phoenix Drakos

"Apollo!" I cried. I pressed on his chest. "Come on, don't give up on me!"

Next to him, lay Fred Swift, with a scared expression on his face, and his spacesuit had pierced his neck. He was bleeding all over.

Apollo's face was covered with blood. It looked horrifying. There were blood stains on his helmet as well, and his eyes were closed.

"Get me the first aid kit," said Tom, coming out of nowhere, looking at his brother's body. "I can only delay it, but eventually, he will die."

For the first time, I could see tears in his eyes. He and Fred had been inseparable. But now, Fred was beyond help. However, I ran to the control room to get the first aid kit and got it back. Tom was constantly pressing Apollo's chest. I hadn't been in such a desperate situation, but I could not lose Apollo.

But-

"Have you seen George?" I asked Tom.

He shook his head. I ran all over the ship to look for him. There he lay, on the back of the ship, bleeding slightly.

"George!" I cried, checking his heartbeat. He was fine, but his right arm was bleeding.

"Hey," he said, with a slight smile.

"Come on!" I cried.

"I'm fine," he groaned, and then got up. "You're Phoenix?"

I gave him my metal arm, and he took it. There was so little light here, only starlight was visible.

"Ah," he said. "We lived."

"No," I said. "Our deaths have only been delayed."

We were in the middle of space with nowhere to go. But then I remembered they had installed a radar. It might have been broken before the black hole. If that was the case, we were stranded in space forever.

We reached Tom.

"Stay here," I said to George who was making weird noises on seeing Apollo and Tom. It was so dark, yet it did not matter, for there was no mistaking Apollo's thin outline and Fred's bald head. I ran to the front, straight into Apollo's wheelchair.

I got up, my knees bruised. I turned on a computer. The radar was slightly damaged. In case of an emergency, Apollo had taught me how to operate this. But when I tried and tried and tried, I could not send a signal. The screen just remained stationary with nothing in it.

Frustrated, I ran back to Apollo, where Tom was mending him. He had torn a part of his spacesuit.

"What are you doing?" I cried. "Stop!"

"It's too late," said Tom. "The only thing we can do now is wait for his death. I have slowed it down, but the lack of oxygen would kill him anyways, and it will kill the rest of us as well. Unless you managed to find a planet nearby?"

I shook my head.

"The radar won't work," I said.

"But is the screen intact?" said Tom.

"No," I said. "There are glass fragments all over it."

"I'm talking about the display. Not how broken the glass is."

"It works, but not properly. The signal didn't reach."

"Well, even if it did, we'd never be able to see who got it."

"So," said George. "How long have we got?"

"Twenty-four hours, perhaps," said Tom.

No one spoke after that, for a while. The spaceship was broken and we were stranded in the middle of space. In some time, we'd be just as dead as Fred Swift. I just felt so angry at everything at the moment. The ones in the alternate universe's Earth had basically just sentenced to death. And we had all trusted them.

So we sat there for a few minutes. According to Tom, Apollo was now beyond help. I was so tired that I took a nap of about ten minutes and then woke up again.

Outside the window, however, there was a star moving. For a wild moment, I thought it was a shooting star. But then it occurred to me that we were beyond any solar system. Or were we?

We didn't really figure that part out.

"Phoenix," said George, all of a sudden, pointing at the star. "What is that?"

Tom stood up as well. I looked closely at the star, except it wasn't a star. It had something written on it, all over. The shape of the thing was familiar. It was really big. It was a spaceship. One of the three spaceships that had taken off from Mars.

"It's been millions of years," said Tom. "How is it still-"

"Millions?" I interrupted.

"Yes," replied Tom. "We were in a high gravitational region twice, and inside a black hole as well, remember? But the surprising thing is that this ship is still floating. It hasn't been hit or anything. The captains must be good here."

All three of us stared at the spaceship.

"Why is it coming to us?" said George.

"Because the signal worked," said Tom. "It just didn't show up on the screen."

Then we all watched in awe as the spaceship came closer and closer...